Daily News Female Athlete of the Year: Shannon Smith

Here’s what it has come to when teams look back on games against Milford’s Shannon Smith. “We got two hits off her, which is exciting,” Algonquin softball coach Lisa Strom said with a laugh. The quote sounds somewhat silly, but it’s a perfectly reasonable response. Moral victories are sometime...

Here’s what it has come to when teams look back on games against Milford’s Shannon Smith. “We got two hits off her, which is exciting,” Algonquin softball coach Lisa Strom said with a laugh.

The quote sounds somewhat silly, but it’s a perfectly reasonable response. Moral victories are sometimes frowned upon in sports, but when actual victories are damn near impossible, one must adjust expectations. In this case, after not mustering a baserunner in its first meeting against Smith this spring, the Tomahawks getting two hits is practically Herculean. After all, Smith only allowed more than that total twice this season. In 24 starts, she allowed a grand total of 29 hits.

“You try to make it so the kids aren’t afraid of her,” Strom said. “You don’t want her name to scare them first. But they all know. They’ve been around long enough.”

“We started (preparing) almost a week before,” said Marlborough coach Kyle Wescott, who sped up his team’s pitching machine significantly in the days leading up to facing the Scarlet Hawks (the Panthers were still no-hit that day, striking out 18 times). “She’s just on a different level.”

Wescott’s referring to Smith’s prowess in the pitching circle, but it could just as easily apply to her terrifying ability with the bat. In high school softball, she is the total package – a fantastic pitcher, hitter, and leader.

“The passion she has at how much she loves the game, in combination with how much she loves being part of a team, and being a good teammate, you do not see this type come around often,” Milford coach Brian Macchi said.

There’s some natural physical gifts and abilities in Smith’s 5-foot-8 frame. But God-given talents alone don’t constitute two-time state Gatorade Players of the Year and eventual scholarship athletes in the SEC, the most competitive softball conference in the NCAA. Smith’s eye-popping high school career – still not complete – has been in the works for over a decade, and that process resulted in an undefeated junior season, a Division 1 state championship for the Scarlet Hawks, and being named 2011-12 Daily News Female Athlete of the Year.

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Denise Davis was one of the first people to see it. Her initial encounter came when Shannon Smith was six, while Smith tagged along with her big sister, Andrea, to lessons at Planet Fastpitch in Uxbridge.

While Andrea received her training, Shannon would throw on the side with her father, Shawn, or coincidentally, with Rachel Lawson, her future coach at the University of Kentucky and a close friend of Davis. Shannon began personal lessons with Davis around the age of nine, and something immediately became apparent.

“She said, ‘you’re literally the spitting image of your sister,’ ” Shannon remembered. “As we took lessons from Denise, we kind of separated.”

Page 2 of 5 - Davis, a former standout pitcher at Rutgers, knows top talent when she comes across it. When you have Olympians like Jennie Finch and Danielle Henderson in your social circle, that recognition comes naturally. And Davis knew she had something special in her facility long before Shannon became a known name.

“I have a journal from when she was 10,” Davis said. “She was so advanced – she blew the doors off many kids in our program. Her goals were specific and so process oriented. She had that as a 10-year-old.”

While Shannon doesn’t remember an exact age, eventually there came a time when she began throwing harder than Andrea, who now plays collegiately at C.W. Post. The sisters have always been close and rarely competitive, so catching up to her older sibling was a different kind of accomplishment.

“You kind of have to stifle your excitement because she’s your older sister and you don’t want to be showing her up,” Shannon said. “I think that’s what made me as humble as I am today. I didn’t want to show off in front of her.”

Don’t mistake humility for satisfaction. Smith has always tried to throw harder than the person next to her. After Davis would do mechanical work on Smith’s delivery, she would go off for further instruction with some of Planet Fastpitch’s best teachers. First, it was Henderson, a gold medalist at the 2000 Sydney Olympics and former All-American at UMass. Then, it was Kaila Holtz, another UMass product and Olympian for Canada in Athens in 2004.

“Her goal was to always out-throw each of those people,” Davis said.

By the time she was 13 years old, her pitches were clocked at 62 miles per hour. That ability helped her earn a spot on the 18-under Rhode Island Thunder Gold team – the club she still plays for – as an eighth-grader. Andrea was already a member of the Thunder, and Shannon was a regular at the team’s games, throwing on the side with her father.

“I could tell right away just by the spin on her ball, the velocity, you could tell next-level ability,” Thunder coach Dave Lotti said. “I was watching her do that as a seventh grader, and she was playing 14-under games. And you can just tell certain kids right away. But it’s a big jump to go from 14 to 18.”

Smith, however, had been playing with the big girls for quite some time. She was seven when she joined Milford’s 10-and-under team, and played Senior League ball (for seventh-and eighth-graders) as a fifth grader. Still, middle schoolers competing at college showcases weren’t common at the time. Once, the Thunder arrived at a showcase where bracelets were given to each player based on their year of high school graduation. There were no bracelets available for eighth graders.

Page 3 of 5 - Coaches, however, were taking notice. During a showcase in Florida, Ken Ericksen – the head coach at South Florida and U.S. national team assistant – approached Smith and the other eighth grader on the Thunder.

“He said, ‘I’m going to be watching you two – you guys are revolutionary,’ ” Smith said.

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It shouldn’t come as a surprise, then, to see that Shannon entered her freshman year at Milford High with an enormous amount of confidence. While she expected to split time in the circle with Andrea, plans eventually changed after she threw a no-hitter against Wachusett in her second career start.

“Really from that point she began to open eyes, and people were beginning to notice who she was and what she was doing,” Macchi said.

Smith’s spectacular freshman season, in which she went 16-1 with a 0.72 ERA, along with a .464 average and 25 RBI, resulted in her first Gatorade award. But the season ultimately ended in heartbreak in the state championship against King Philip, when Smith unsuccessfully tried to battle a case of pink-eye at the worst possible time. The Scarlet Hawks lost, 10-1.

“I felt a huge disappointment to (Andrea) and the other seniors on the team,” Smith said. “That big of a failure in the public eye had never really happened to me before. I had never had newspaper reporters at a game in my life. Having that big of a failure expressed to the public, I kind of took it to heart. … That was my biggest motivator for the following year.”

A dominant sophomore season followed, as Smith went 21-2 with five no-hitters, a 21-2 record and 296 strikeouts (along with a .357 average at the plate), but the dream of a state championship was again dashed in the state semifinals against Amherst. Then, she took her abilities to another level this spring.

In the circle, she allowed a staggering two earned runs all season, for an ERA of 0.08. She threw nine no-hitters, won all 24 starts, and struck out a mind-boggling 359 hitters in 167 innings. If that wasn’t enough for another Gatorade honor, her .462 average with nine home runs and 40 RBIs put her over the top.

“It’s gone beyond anyone’s imagination of what she was going to be four years ago,” Macchi said.

She was no better this year than on May 19 against Fitchburg. In warm-ups, Macchi’s sister, Jenna — who serves as Smith’s pitching coach — approached Brian and said the movement on her pitches was the best it had been all year. That afternoon, Smith threw a perfect game, striking out 20 of 21 batters.

And, of course, she was also at her best when it mattered most, throwing a one-hit, nine-inning shutout with 22 strikeouts in the state final against Malden.

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There’s been an incredible amount of work done for Smith away from the field. Her offseasons are not only spent doing sprints and lifting weights, but also heading to Planet Fastpitch to do video analysis of her motion, breaking it down to fractions of a second. She does drills in front of mirrors without a ball in her hand. And when working on softball isn’t an option, she does whatever is available. Smith tried to pitch through a pulled hip flexor right before her sophomore year, which exacerbated the injury. Unable to run or throw for several months, Smith joined the swim team as a backstroker to stay in shape.

It’s all paid dividends. Smith now squats 225 pounds, which not only has allowed her to pick up extra drive in her pitches, but resulted in a spike in her power numbers at the plate. And she still is making strides. Davis recalls a time in her facility last November that Smith nailed a technique in which stabilizing her upper arm against her body results in increased velocity.

“I can remember her face the first time she did that, and her smile was ear to ear,” Davis said. “That’s the Mecca of a pitch, the moment when you throw it once like that. That’s where the elite players live.”

No one is more critical of Smith’s performances than herself. Despite throwing 16 career no-hitters, Smith has been unhappy with some of those outings, and said she always is competing against herself. That won’t change anytime soon. Despite already nailing down her scholarship to Kentucky last fall, and delivering Milford a state championship, the pressure hasn’t subsided. Lotti and Davis both felt that if there’s any weakness to her repertoire, it’s a dominant drop ball. Smith continues to work on that pitch, and goes full-throttle during showcases with the Thunder, maintaining a summer schedule that her peers call “brutal.”

“I miss every weekend of the summer, and a lot of friendship time,” she said. “There’s only so many more games I can play in my life. There’s a time for me to go to the beach, there’s a time for me to go to parties. That time isn’t now.”

Nevertheless, she finds the time, in between maintaining a 3.6 GPA at school, to serve as a junior instructor at Planet Fastpitch, learn the viola and volunteer with the Special Olympics.

“She’s an excellent role model,” Davis said. “At the end of the day, it’s great that she strikes everyone out, but the key to it all is that she’s a special kid.”

So what to expect for an encore performance next spring?

“What she is going to hear from me a lot next year, there is enough motivation for her to realize that her softball career is not done next year,” Macchi said. “It’s just getting started. It’s continuing to grow and continuing to get better and realize that she can throw this pitch on this count. And offensively, continuing to produce in any situation that she’s presented with.”

Page 5 of 5 - “My enjoyment comes from winning,” Smith said. “If I have to put in more work in the offseason to win those games, then I’ll do it.”